


Unto Dust

by Wisteria_Leigh



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death, Panic Attacks, Post-Canon, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-28 12:38:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15707400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wisteria_Leigh/pseuds/Wisteria_Leigh
Summary: Tucked away behind all the other boxes was a box with his surname. “Parrish.” A legacy of rage, ledgers of wounds received and catalogs of wounds to be given away. Full of putrid monster blood that seeped through its container to taint everything around it. Echoes that clawed through the walls, "you will never be more than the dirt from which you came."That was Adam Parrish's sole inheritance. And he was now its patriarch.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I hope to be sensitive to individuals' needs in terms of tags & warnings, so if any other tags are needed pls lemme know.

Depending on where you began the story, it was a story about families.

A story of bloodlines and inheritance, surnames and wills. A story of those named next of kin, and those who were mere ink stains in a obituary. A story of rights of succession, by will or by force.

Adam Parrish, only child of a man more monster than human, refused both power and kingdom for merely existing. Inheritor of violence because of his blood, assigned to poverty because of his name.

Finding connections between disparate objects was a miraculous gift; an awesome power at the bequest of a dead king and the ley line on which he rested. But it was just that: a gift. Something given, something added; not something innate. Because unlike Ronan or Gansey or Blue of Cheng, Adam was not born to wealth and power and kingdoms to be claimed.

Adam was born to a legacy of dust, molded from dirt and grit and bruises and shame. He was never meant to be greater than the 1440 square feet of his Appalachian mobile home, never meant to rule more than his stoop. He was the inheritor of a bloodied fist and generations of fury. But Adam foresoke his titles, abdicated the throne of his father’s making, accepted banishment rather than the limits of his blood & his name.

Ronan Lynch, second child of a man more god than human, bestowed both power and kingdom by a will only he could rewrite. Consigned secrets because of his blood, entrusted wealth because of his name.

Pulling objects from dreams was a miraculous trick; a wondrous bequest from the Lynch Family blood. At the time Ronan’s nature became known to his friends, there hadn't been time to wonder on its complexities and curiosities. When ominous prophecies foretell of destruction and despair and the death of your King, there isn’t much time to question the fragile shape of your reality.

Yet once the demon was bested; once Cabeswater was sacrificed; once Gansey was reborn and the dead had been mourned; Ronan looked to the next quest: understanding his impossible existence. Because being the sole inheritor of Niall Lynch’s legacy was an awesome and frightening thing.  

For the first few years, while Adam was in undergrad and they were adjusting to life after death, demons, destruction, and decay, Ronan focused his energy on restoring the farm and rebuilding Cabeswater.

One day, as Adam readied to graduate a year early, Ronan woke up and suddenly realized he’d finally fallen into the rhythm of planting, tending, harvesting, herding. Which meant it was time for another adventure.  

Ronan had spent the better portion of the past few years deciphering and decoding his father’s files and documents. The insatiable desire to understand who he was, why this Greywaren power was his, and what he was meant to be doing with it drove him with manic-like fervor.

“If you had put this much effort into Aglionby, you would’ve been top of the class,” Adam noted one night when he found Ronan hunched over a pile of papers, using Adam’s laptop & new Georgetown ID to access census databases and newspaper archives.

“Did Aglionby have a class about determining my destiny?” Ronan growled.

“Depending on how you’d define the purpose of philosophy or literature,” Adam replied, “you could argue--”

“So fucking no, then.”

Tireless research paid off when, a year later, Ronan presented Adam with a list of names, addresses, and newspaper articles concerning peculiar events that matched his rough estimate of Niall’s timeline.

“I found the Lynch family,” Ronan declared triumphantly. He shoved a stack of papers in Adam’s face, the top pages fluttering in the early August breeze wafting through The Barn’s screen doors. “And I’m going to go interrogate the shit out of them.”

“Pretty sure that’ll get you kicked out of the country on terrorism charges, but okay,” Adam replied, only briefly glancing up from his binder of summer research notes.

“Ye of little faith,” Ronan snorted. “Like I’d let them catch me.”

“Uh-huh. Hey, make sure when you dream up another car over there to escape the feds that the wheel’s on the right side.”

Ronan decided to not waste precious sleep on dreaming up a car when he landed in Belfast at the start of October, because being wealthy as fuck and 25 years old meant he could just rent a cool car instead. He hadn’t considered needing practice before he took to the roads.

“Nearly crashed, like, four times. Fucking nuts, man,” he said over the phone to Adam that night, his adrenaline-junkie grin audible even with the shoddy cell phone service.

Adam was far less amused. “Did you seriously just waste three of my _very limited_ international minutes to tell me that?”

“Yes?”

Adam sighed. “Get off the phone and only call me if something _legitimately important_ happens.”

“So...wait until I almost die _five_ times in one day?”

Adam hung up.

Ronan was to be gone for the full month of October. Matthew had been commuting from Singer Falls to James Madison University since his freshman year, happy to work as a farmhand for Ronan; with Matthew around, Ronan was able to split his time between Henrietta and D.C.. Still, Adam was told to check in on him every so often (“I love the kid, but he has the attention span of a fucking goldfish,” Ronan explained.

“You realize you dreamed him that way, right?” Adam replied. “So really you’re just insulting yourself.”

“If you’re gonna keep critiquing me, Parrish, you can get the fuck outta our bed.”)

Ronan and Adam had settled into the communication pattern of most cohabiting couples--texting or calling only when there were immediate needs involved (“can you open the door?” “where did you leave the remote?” “movie is at 7” “get here faster.”)--so Ronan’s adventuring didn’t put a dent in communications like it might have. Adam was neck-deep in coursework for his Masters degree at Georgetown, anyways, so he didn’t exactly have the time for lengthy conversations.

For two weeks, six days, 13 hours, 24 minutes, and 13 seconds, everything continued as usual, just a little less loud and a little less fast and with significantly less EDM.

Two weeks, six days, 13 hours, 24 minutes, and 14 seconds into Ronan’s absence, Adam received a call from 300 Fox Way.

Two weeks, six days, 13 hours, 26 minutes, and 35 seconds into Ronan’s Irish Adventure, he received a call from Adam. And then another one. And then another one.

Ronan, caught in a rare moment of generosity after one and a half pints with his long-lost cousins, checked his perpetually-silenced phone as Adam rang for the fourth time in just as many minutes.

Ronan’s brow furrowed as he inhaled a shallow breath. He accepted the call while excusing himself, and ducked out the pub’s back door.

“Parrish,” Ronan said in his best attempt to swallow his nerves. He tucked his free hand in his armpit against the chilly autumn air and leaned against the stone & ivy wall. “Thought I wasn’t worth spending the long-distance rates for a call?”

“Ronan?” Adam said. His voice was soft. Not in the affectionate way, or in the Shut-Up-Asshole-We’re-In-A-Library way. In the brittle way. Like his words were travelling a too-far distance, or that they might break something--or someone--if spoken wrong.

Ronan’s heart began to beat a little bit faster. “What’s up?”

Deep breath in, slow and unsteady breath out. “My dad died.”

The line crackled with static.

“Oh. Shit,” Ronan replied. “Um.”

“Yeah.”

“How did you…”

“Maura called.”

Ronan grunted. “They see him on St. Mark’s?”

“She didn’t say. Just that she saw the obituary. They had a feeling I didn’t know.”

Ronan made a noise. Of course it was a fucking feeling.

“Is that....do you need...what do you need right now?” Ronan stammered, running a hand over the back of his head again and again and again.

Adam didn’t say anything.

“Are you thinking, or do you need a minute?” Ronan asked.

“I…” Adam started, then sighed. “Both, I guess.”

“Okay.”

A few beats passed in silence.

“Sorry,” Adam finally said.

“Don’t fucking apologize,” Ronan replied. “Hey, I can catch a flight back. Might not be until tomorrow night, but--”

“No,” Adam said, quick and sharp. Another deep breath. “No. It’s fine. I just. I need to go back to Henrietta. It’s cool if I stay at The Barns, right?”

“‘Course, Parrish. Mi casa es su casa, or whatever. You sure you don’t want me back?”

“Yeah. It’s fine. I’m fine. It’ll be fine. Where’d you leave the keys?”

“Top drawer of the desk. The locked one.”

“Okay.”

“Might as well take the BMW, too, if you’re grabbing the keys, and not push your luck with Shitbox Gen. II.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Hey,” Ronan said, hoping to be heard over the shuffling on the other end of the line. “Are you okay?”

“Okay enough,” Adam muttered. “Found ‘em.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“That I found the keys, dumbass.”

“No, before that. ‘Okay enough?’”

“Yeah. I’m fine enough to deal with this shit and get it over with and move on with the rest of my life.”

Ronan paced in the alleyway, tracing the mortar with his knuckles while waiting for Adam’s ragged breathing to settle into something calmer, more controlled.

“I’m gonna ask you this, and I know you’re not gonna like it, and you better not bite my fucking head off,” Ronan said. “Are you sure you want to go back for this?”

Silence.

“You don’t owe her, or that bastard, a single fucking thing. Not even this. You know that,” Ronan continued. “Right?”

Adam exhaled like he’d been holding his breath. “I know. I’m not going for them.”

“Okay,” Ronan said, although he wasn’t sure he believed him.

“Okay,” Adam said, like he wasn't sure he believed himself. “I guess I’ll talk to you later.”

“If you change your mind about me coming home, the offer still stands. Got it?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

The line went dead.

Ronan ripped a handful of ivy from the wall and threw it down the alleyway. He inhaled violently through his nose and exhaled with a hiss. Then he straightened his leather jacket, turned his phone off vibrate, and marched back into the pub.

 

#######

 

Twenty minutes after his chat with Ronan, Adam packed a duffle bag. Thirty minutes after, he texted Matthew to let him know he was coming. Matthew showered him in condolences, and although all of them genuine and well-intended, they tasted like ash in Adam’s mouth. He replied with a simple “thank you.” Matthew offered to crash at his fraternity house so Adam could have some time alone, and Adam agreed that would be best.

 _You need anything, though, just let me know!!!!!!!_ Matthew texted.

What Adam needed was to not have to deal with any of this shit. But he couldn’t exactly ask that of Matthew.

Thirty-five minutes after, he emailed his advisor. She was quick to reply, offering her deepest sympathies, demanding he take a full week at minimum to process and mourn, explaining that she would talk to the Dean and Academic Affairs, and promising to restructure his thesis schedule to account for this.

He choked down the generosity, and replied with a simple “thank you.”

She sent one more email. _“If you need anything, Mr. Parrish, please don’t hesitate to ask. Family and your self-care come first, understood?”_

How, exactly, was Adam supposed to reply to that? “Thank you, Professor Kruger, but I actually haven’t spoke to my father in years because he physically abused me and caused permanent hearing loss in my left ear, so we’re not really family anymore because they made it very clear I was just the unfortunate byproduct of terrible sex education in rural communities and not someone worth their time or resources or care.”

Adam wanted to throw something. Or throw up. Possibly both.

Instead, he replied with a simple “Thank you, I will.”

Forty-five minutes after, he was in the BMW, GPS set for Henrietta, EDM music turned to a volume Ronan would be proud of, in the hopes that maybe the pounding bass and screaming synth would stop him from thinking for once in his goddamn life.

He made it to Henrietta in 1.5 hours instead of 2.

 

#######

 

 

When Adam moved from Princeton to D.C., he conveniently forgot to send his mother his new address. And when he upgraded his pay-per-use burner phone to a more socially acceptable Android, he neglected to give her his new number.

Adam hadn’t thought about the consequences of that--namely having to hear about the death of Robert via psychics and then gleam funeral information from the Henrietta Herald’s obit page. All he wanted was to be done with them. No more trying. No more guilt. No more nightmares of fists and belts and his face in the dirt.

Which is why his reaction to this whole “your father had a heart attack” situation was...unsettling.

When the EDM turned off, his mind began to spiral with renewed vigor. He shoved it all--thoughts, feelings, memories--down as deep as they could go, and then crushed them down an extra bit for good measure, and knocked on the door of 300 Fox Way.

“Magician,” Calla announced as she opened the door.

“Calla,” Adam nodded.

“Sorry about your old man,” she said. Her nonchalance was surprisingly welcome.

“Thanks,” Adam replied after swallowing the lump in his throat. “You wouldn’t happen to have the newspaper still, would you?”

“Newspaper? Oh. Right. I think Jimi’s using them for her painting. JIMI.”

“WHAT?” answered a voice from deep within the house.

“NEWSPAPER,” Calla roared.

“WHAT ABOUT IT?”

“DO YOU HAVE IT?”

“WHY?”

“BECAUSE!”

Floorboards creaked. A few voices argued. Someone pounded down the stairs.

“Here,” Jimi said with a sigh, handing over a crumpled stack of paint-stained papers.

Adam took them and started sorting. Jimi stalked back up the stairs with a huff.

Thankfully, the obit page had been spared from Jimi’s Jackson Pollock moment. Adam scribbled down the funeral time and the cemetary name.

“Adam?”

He turned from the kitchen table. Maura was standing in the doorway, a sad smile flickering past as she looked at Adam.  

“Hi, Maura,” he said, biting his tongue as his voice cracked. “Thanks for the call earlier.”

“Of course,” she replied. She put a gentle hand on Adam’s shoulder and ruffled his hair. “You doing okay?”

“Okay enough,” he said with a shrug.

“That’s what I thought. Don’t know how long you’re in town for, but Blue might be stopping home during her fall break if you want me to let her kn--”

“No,” Adam said quickly. Probably too quickly. “No, thank you, I appreciate that. But I’m just here for the funeral and that’s it.”

Maura narrowed her eyes, but didn’t push any further. “Well, let us know if you need anything while you’re in town,” she said.

“We can make a damn good spaghetti casserole,” Calla added.

“Thank you. I’ll let you know,” Adam said. A non-answer, and they all knew it.

Maura placed a hand on his cheek, Calla clapped him on the back, and Adam repeated his thanks.

He sped, as Ronan would have, down winding back roads of pastures and cornfields, bass drops threatening to shatter windows.

He wasn’t confident enough to attempt Ronan’s signature sideways slide. He instead pulled neatly to the side of the gravel driveway.

Matthew, as promised, was gone.

He was alone.

 

#######

 

 

Adam’s experiment in recovering some semblance of a normal mother-son relationship went like this:

Hypothesis: Adam Parrish sending Alice Parrish notice of his success will allow them to recover the mother/son bond, which had been lost beneath Adam’s bed when he was hiding from his father, or possibly when he hid in the dark corners of the kitchen cabinets, or maybe it had rolled under the threadbare sofa when his father slammed him against the wall after he broke a dinner plate.

Method: Letters of newspaper clippings, of scholarship announcements, of papers published and grade reports, sent to Alice directly, sure to be intercepted by Robert and therefore containing no incriminating information.

Results: A letter begging for the funds Adam didn’t need thanks to his full ride. A letter that wished he’d give them credit in these articles, that asked him to remember who paved the path for his success with their hard work and sacrifices and gracious hearts _._ A letter that told him to never come ‘round here again long as you’re still fooling around with that boy, y’hear?

Conclusion: Guilt. Shame. A cyclical mantra: _unworthy, abandoner, ungrateful, a sin._

Ronan had ripped that final letter from his hands and gave it to Chainsaw to play with.

“Fuck them,” was all he said. Adam had agreed.

That was last he’d heard from them.

 

 

#######

 

 

_“Was that a tone I heard from you, boy?”_

_The first lash is always the worst. Grit your teeth. Apologize. Don’t let him see you cry. Don’t let him see you cry. Don’t let him see…._

_The belt buckle cracks against his skin._

Adam shot awake with a cry, chest heaving and blood pounding in his ears. The sharp sting of metal and leather lingered across his back.

He clung to the sheets of Ronan’s bed and closed his eyes. “Take a deep breath,” he whispered. “Count to ten. Tell me where you are.”

A ritual Ronan had taught him, a long time ago, when nightmares of demons and blood rivers and black unmaking and the soft skin of Ronan’s neck crushed beneath his calloused hands ravaged his brain night after night.

Deep inhale. 10 seconds. Exhale.

_I’m in Ronan’s...no, our bed. I’m safe._

Deep inhale. 10 seconds. Exhale.

_It smells like mist and moss and trees and that gross cologne Gansey bought Ronan for Christmas. I’m safe._

Deep inhale. 10 seconds. Exhale.

_I am not in the trailer. I’m safe._

Deep inhale. 10 seconds. Exhale.

_I’m safe._

Adam opened his eyes. Sweat glistened in the soft glow of the ORBMASTER JR. lights Ronan had strung in the crease between ceiling & wall. It was 1:30 in the morning.

He scrubbed his face and drew his knees to his chest.

“Shit,” he sighed.

He didn’t trust himself to sleep again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp here we are. Listened to my sad songs playlist a few too many times while writing this.
> 
> Full disclosure: this story is completed (minus the ending because endings are hard); it's split into chapters because it'd be overwhelmingly long otherwise. So if you liked it, never fear: you'll get more soon!!
> 
> I've been writing fanfiction as practice writing, so my work is open for constructive criticism about dialogue, flow, pacing, plot, etc etc etc.
> 
> Thanks, y'all!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan, King of Insomnia and Master of Mourning, knew the symptoms of grief-induced sleep deprivation like he knew the gear shifts of his prized BMW. And while Adam handled the world's shittiness differently--i.e. did not find someone to fistfight, did not drink himself into oblivion, did not drive his BMW at reckless and incredibly illegal speeds down I-81 well past midnight--Ronan could still tell Adam was being pulled in by something dark and dangerous.

It was warm. Too warm. One of those unexpected days of blistering heat that came in early fall, before the crisp winds of the Blue Ridge Mountains blustered summer into hibernation.  

Adam hadn’t left the car, and he was already sweating. He supposed, however, that probably wasn’t just from the heat.

When Ronan had told him to take the BMW, Adam hadn’t considered how it’s luxurious & freshly-waxed body would look juxtaposed to the brown grass of Henrietta Baptist's neglected cemetery. As he parked at the front of the very small parade of jalopies and second-hand pickups, he was painfully, infuriatingly aware of this oversight. And was also aware that the entire funeral party was staring at him.

Adam took a deep breath, counted to ten, and exhaled. Then did it again. Once more. A fourth time because this stupid breathing technique wasn’t fucking working. One more try. Okay, but one last time, really, because the longer he sat sweltering in this goddamn car the more he could feel them staring and all he wanted was to get this shit over with without having to deal with judgemental, ignorant, obnoxious commentary from the Appalachian peanut gallery.

He drove his head back into the headrest, closing his eyes with a frustrated huff.

Why was he doing this?

Not once during this whole ordeal had Adam stopped to think about why, exactly, he asked to be excused from class, why he got in Ronan’s car, why he drove 315 miles, why he now sat in a graveyard at 1:30pm on October 14th for a man who he couldn’t call “father” but certainly couldn’t call “Robert” because that’s how you got your teeth knocked out of your skull, disrespecting your father like that you ungrateful piece of _shit_ why I outta--

He bit a hangnail on his thumb, and pulled himself back to the present.

Enough. It didn’t matter why he was doing this. He just needed to do it and get it done and go home and never think about about this again...until of course Alice Parrish passed and Adam, being the sole survivor of this branch of the Parrish family tree would have to deal with all of the preparation and arrangements and bullshit familial obligations and--

_Stop._

He had the rest of his life to think and overthink. Right now, the longer he waited in this expensive, fancy, Aglionby-branded car the harsher the glares and whispers would be.

Adam heaved himself out of the car, hissing a curse between clenched teeth. He desperately wanted to slam the door shut. Instead, he closed it as quietly as possible, and locked it with the key so it wouldn’t beep. No need to show off.  

These deep breaths really weren’t doing a damn thing, but he took one anyways, slid his expression into a practiced neutral, and crunched through the crabgrass to the gravesite.  

Attendance was...pathetic, if Adam was completely honest. Only a handful of Robert Parrish’s barfly acquaintances and Tyson Foods factory coworkers, a couple aunts Adam had never met, and an uncle or two were present. Men with Henrietta’s fine-boned faces, dressed in suits that were too big or too small, stained and scuffed with dust on sleeves and frayed seams. Women in black dresses worn down to grey from too many washes and passed through too many hands, with dusty hair permed and styled like they’d missed the last 3 decades.

Adam, in his tailored suit with a haircut done by a professional in a salon, no longer belonged here. And while he may stand among them with his fine-boned face and dusty hair and, at a quick glance, look like one of them, they watched him like he was an outsider.

There were two metal chairs in the tent, closest to the casket. One for the wife, one for the son.

The gathering parted when Adam arrived, making way for him to be where customs and culture dictated a dead man’s biological son should be at his funeral. Only one or two of those he made eye contact with nodded in acknowledgment. Most kept a fair breadth between themselves and the exile. Whispers passed among them regardless.

Alice had taken her place at the front. One of Robert’s sisters had taken Adam’s.

He stood to the left of this aunt he had never met, hands curled into fists in the pockets of his slacks. He chanced only a brief glance at his mom. She looked hollow, more so than usual. Void. Her eyes were tinged with red, as if she had cried not long before taking her seat at the gravesite. That was the only evidence that Alice Parrish felt anything at all.

Adam had often wondered what exactly had carved her out: whether it had been poverty, or Robert, or Adam, or some childhood trauma he’d never know about, or if maybe each of those things had taken gluttonous bites out of her until only a shell remained.

His chest tightened. A natural reaction to seeing any creature in pain, he supposed. 

_Remember that you hate her, Adam Parrish. Remember what they did to you._

The unknown aunt laid a hand on Alice’s trembling shoulder, and whipped around to glare at Adam. He did as he was told; he looked away.

The air smelled of decay. The death of a season. Bodies rotting beneath their feet. Trash bins overflowing in the dirt roads of the trailer park after four days of sitting in the summer sun. Carpet that reeked so strongly of stale beer and cigarette ash and mildew from a half-fixed leak that Adam nearly retched as his face was pinned beneath the mud-caked tread of his father’s work boots--

The minister cleared his throat, mouth drawn into a disinterested frown. Adam didn’t know him, and he didn’t appear to know the Parrishes, either. It was better that way.

It was as modest a ceremony as one could get. Gathering, reading, prayers, reflection, commendation, “amen.” They lowered the coffin. Tossed the customary handfuls of dirt. The minister glanced at his watch, shook Alice’s hand, and left. Off to bury more important people, Adam supposed.

And that was that. A few attendees sprinkled their own fistfuls of dry, Virginian dirt onto the coffin. Murmurs of condolences and the occasional sniffle drifted around the tent, only to follow the clusters of people back to their cars.

No one spoke to Adam until only he and Alice remained. They were standing outside the tent, sweat beading beneath Adam’s collar under the sun’s violent gaze.

“You look good,” Alice said.

It took Adam a moment to realize she was speaking to him. He squinted at the ground. "Thanks."

“I didn’t know if you’d make it down. Had no way of tellin’ you he’d passed, you know. Since you stopped writin’ home.”

Adam only shrugged.

Her gaze flickered to the BMW parked alone on the dry grass. “Means you’re still with that boy, don’t it?”

“Yes ma’am. Means a lot of other things, too.”

Alice shook her head, lips drawn in a tight line.

“What am I supposed to do now?” she whispered.

“I’ve made a pretty decent life without him,” Adam said plainly, shoulders hunched as he shuffled his dress shoes through the dirt. “I reckon you could too, if you tried.”

Alice looked at him blankly for a moment. Her eyes slid over his shoulder to the grave. “He wouldn’t have liked that you came."

Adam bit the inside of his cheek. “Can’t say I much liked being here, either."

They stood in silence a moment more. An aunt came eventually, casting a wary glance at Adam, speaking softly in Alice’s ear about a reception to which Adam had not been invited. Alice let herself be led by the elbow to the car. She did not look back.

Adam was left alone among the dead.

The cemetery caretakers had pulled up the tarp, folded the chairs, and taken down the tent. The casket sat in the grave, covered only by the thin layer of dirt deposited during the service.

This was the closest he’d been to his father since his final visit to Antietam Lane, after Aglionby’s graduation. The last loose end to knot before he could leave Henrietta behind.

6 feet, a layer of dirt, and a cheap casket between him and his father.

Adam couldn’t breath.  

It wasn’t enough. It was never enough. A misdemeanor hadn’t been enough. Cabeswater hadn’t been enough. 315 miles hadn’t been enough. And they think thin pinewood and a hole in the ground would stop him? Robert Parrish punched through doors. Didn’t they know that?

He touched his cheek to the forgotten ache of broken capillaries and damaged muscles; he touched his ear with the phantom sting of a busted eardrum: he tasted dust again at the corners of his mouth.  

_For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return._

A voice crackled through the white noise filling Adam’s head. “You okay, son?”

He looked up. One of the caretakers stood opposite of him, shovel in hand. A truck full of dirt stood waiting.

How long had he been staring?

“Son?”

“Yessir,” Adam mumbled. “Sorry.”

They were going to fill the grave. It was time to leave _(but did they really think Robert Parrish could be stopped by a little bit of dirt? Did any of them know what he did?)_

“This your pops?” the man said, words slurred by Appalachian blood and teeth rotted down to the gums. Adam only offhandedly realized he had not yet moved from the grave.

“Sorry for your loss, son."

The truck revved, warning siren beeping as the back lifted up to dump the dirt.

“He made me deaf in one ear,” Adam replied, a million miles away.

“Eh? What’d you say?”

“Thanks,” Adam said. His brain & his body reconnected. He walked away.

Dirt thundered onto the coffin. Adam tasted old blood in his mouth.  

It wasn’t until he gripped the wheel of Ronan’s BMW that he realized his hands were shaking.

 

#######

 

Adam told Ronan not to fly home. That he would be fine. That he didn’t need help.

For two days, Ronan was at least partially convinced that Adam had been telling the truth. His responses to Ronan’s texts were curt, but at least they were something. He had even written something akin to a joke. _I guess it takes a funeral to get you to text more than twice a day._ Gallows humor. Ronan approved.

Tuesday afternoon, Adam stopped replying.

Wednesday morning, Ronan booked the next available flight back to the states.

He said his goodbyes, made promises to return soon that he intended to keep, and left Belfast at ass o’clock in the morning.

By early Thursday afternoon he was climbing the porch steps of The Barns, travel bag hooked in his fingers and slung over his shoulder.

“Parrish?” he called as he opened the whining front door. The house creaked in reply. “Adam,” he tried again.

“Here,” came a muffled reply from his left. Adam peeled himself up from the couch, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Ronan? What’re you doing here?”

“Heard someone was squatting in my house,” Ronan said, smile sharp as a blade. “Figured I’d come scare the fucker off myself.”

The ghost of a smile flickered past Adam’s lips. “I thought you didn’t lie.”

“I don’t.” He dropped his bag by the door and all but threw himself on the couch beside Adam. He took his hand, kissed each knuckle once, to then kiss his jaw, his cheek, and, at last, his lips. A ritual for Ronan’s worship.

“Did that scare you off?” Ronan breathed against Adam’s skin.

“No,” Adam replied.

“Damn. There goes my only plan.”

He pulled back, but only just. He thumbed at the dark circles beneath Adam’s tired eyes, took note of how dim his blue eyes seemed, saw the shadow of stubble along his clenched jaw. Adam was wearing the red flannel shirt he dreamt him for Christmas sophomore year of college, the one that permanently smelled like trees after rain and cinnamon and burning hickory logs, that gave the wearer the faint feeling of being held by someone who cared about them, the one he hoped would remind Adam of him whenever he wore it.

“Why are you here?” Adam asked again.

“Because your dad died, shithead,” Ronan answered, tracing the seams of Adam’s sleeves. “You think I’d just sit twiddling my thumbs across the ocean while you’re dealing with all this shit? Fuck no.”

Ronan had no desire to stain the sacred ether of his home with Hallmark’s sympathetic cliches, and he knew Adam didn’t want to hear them. _Sorry for your loss. Time heals all wounds. He’s with God in Heaven now._

No one was sorry. His death was not the wound that needed healing. And if Robert Parrish was currently having a lovely chat with God instead of burning in hellfire for the rest of eternity, Ronan would march downtown to St. Agnes and declare himself excommunicated.

“How was it?” Ronan asked.

“It was a funeral,” Adam replied with a shrug, biting at the edge of his thumbnail.  

Ronan toyed mindlessly with Adam’s other hand.

“How are you?” he tried again.

Another shrug. “I’m going back to D.C. on Tuesday.”

Ronan paused. “Tuesday? Really? Adam ‘Work-Myself-Into-a-Fucking-Coma’ Parrish is taking time off? Gotta be honest, I’m sort of impressed by this personal growth.”

Adam rolled his eyes. “My advisor told me if I showed up before Wednesday, she’d lock me out of the classroom,” he said, and Ronan couldn’t tell whether or not he was joking.

“Remind me to write her a thank-you note."

“Not a chance,” Adam replied, a weak and unconvincing smile twisting only the edges of his lips.

Ronan’s brow furrowed. He took Adam’s hand and kissed it once more. “Hungry? Matthew usually has, like, pizza rolls or some shit around here,” Ronan said, standing up but keeping a gentle hold of Adam’s hand. “I’m fucking starving.”

Adam slipped his hand out of Ronan’s grip and curled into the corner of the couch. “Nah, I’m good,” he said.

Ronan quirked an eyebrow and crossed his arms. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Positive?”

“Ronan.”

“Okay, okay, just making sure,” Ronan said, hands raised in surrender.

He made extra anyways. Because Adam would always eat them.

Except this time, Adam didn’t eat them. He stayed curled in the corner of the couch, chewing on his fingernail, staring at the stupid action movie Ronan turned on without watching it at all, and keeping his hands tight against his body where Ronan couldn’t reach them.

And Ronan was trying very, very hard to not take it personally.

Halfway through the movie, Adam stood up suddenly, grabbed the empty plate and cup Ronan left on the coffee table, and whisked it off to the kitchen. Ronan followed.

“Thanks, I think,” he said. “Was the movie that boring?”

“Didn’t feel like watching it,” Adam grunted.

“Stop washing my dishes,” Ronan commanded. “I got it.”

“It’s fine--”

Ronan leveled him a look, daring him to argue. Adam knew better than to accept the challenge.

“Get a soda and sit the fuck down,” Ronan said. So Adam did.

Ronan didn’t actually clean his dishes. He rinsed them and left them in the sink, which Adam assumed was 2 parts laziness and 1 part a power move.

“By the way, your phone was making a fuckton of noise,” Ronan said, joining him at the table with a cup of coffee.

“Hm.”

“Maybe you should answer it.”

Adam’s eyebrows shot into his hairline. “ _You’re_ telling me to answer my phone?”

Ronan shrugged. “I’m not the one with 27 unanswered messages.”

Adam rolled his eyes.

“5 of them are from me.”

“Jesus, Lynch,” Adam grumbled.

Adam grabbed his phone from across the table, where he’d left it hours--maybe even days--ago. The lock screen was full of unopened, unanswered messages. From his Princeton friends (because he’d made the mistake of telling one of them, and now everyone knew), from the group chat of his graduate school cohort, from his research professors. All of them iterations of the same: _So sorry for your loss. Tell us if you need anything._

Like Adam would ever own up to needing anything. Give him that “if” and he’d run with it for miles.

Adam needed. He always needed. And he hated admitting it. Once Ronan figured that out, he’d finally understood the question he should be asking.

_What do you need?_

Not an “if”. A certainty. You need, I will provide.

“I just...what do I say to any of them? They don’t know. They don’t know what my life was like...with him. With them. I don’t want to explain it all to them.”

“So don’t,” Ronan said.

Adam scoffed. “Like it’s that easy.”

“It is. What’d you think I tell people? ‘Oh yeah my dad was murdered with a tire iron because he could pull shit from his mind, shit like my mother, who was also murdered, by a demon in the magic forest she lived in’? No, I just fucking say they’re dead and accept people’s bullshit condolences and move the fuck on.”

“That’s different.”

“How the fuck is that any different?”

“Because your parents actually loved you,” Adam spat back. “And you loved them back.”

Ronan groaned, “God, Parrish, are you fucking kidding me--”

Adam shoved himself and his chair away from Ronan. “Here’s how your story goes,” he said, tone low and furious. “‘Oh, Ronan, what ever happened to your parents?’ ‘They fucking died.’ ‘Oh wow that’s so terrible I’m so sorry you dealt with that.’ ‘Yeah, it was fucking sad, and I miss the fuck outta them.’ People don’t need to know the details because, despite all the weird fucking Greywaren shit, _you_ had a family that loved you and that you loved back. People _get_ that. So of course you can just say ‘thanks I appreciate your fucking words’ or whatever the hell you’d say because no one needs your whole tragic backstory in order to feel sympathy.”

“Parrish,” Ronan growled. It was a warning.

Adam felt his grief folding over into anger, in the way his throat tightened around a scream instead of a sob, the way his fists itched to slam into the table or a door frame or a wall, how his expression hardened into stone and his voice turned frigid and sharp, a weapon in and of itself no matter what he said.

“Let me tell you what happens when I say shit. Scenario 1: I thank people for their sympathy. They act like I must be so broken up over my dad being gone. ‘I’m sure you miss him I’m sure he was great I’m sure he’d be so proud of you’ no, he’s none of those things, he’s rotting in a casket in the dirt where he belongs. But no one knows that so I just sit there and I’m reminded over and over of the happy little family I never fucking got to have.”

“Parrish,” Ronan said. Sharper. Louder.

“Scenario 2: I say that I’m not sad he’s gone,” Adam hissed, words beyond his control, everything just spilling and spilling and spilling like a dam had burst. “I say that my life will be so much better without him in it at all. People tell me I’m an ungrateful bastard with no soul. Tell me I should be kinder or should forgive him or whatever the fuck, and then I feel like a piece of shit for celebrating that someone is dead.”

“ _Parrish._ ”

“Scenario 3: I tell them everything. I tell them about the bruises and the yelling and the ear and the misdemeanor. I tell them about all of the ugly words they called me and they called you in those letters. I tell them about how we hadn’t spoken in years, how I heard he’d died from a fucking obituary notice that I _wasn't even mentioned in_. And do you know what happens then? They pity me. They get that look Gansey always used to get whenever he’d see the bruises or the cuts or the limping or whatever. That fucking ‘I feel so sorry for you’ look. And I don’t. Fucking. Want. That.”

“ _Adam.”_

Once, when he and Ronan had been driving late at night, they found a fawn on the side of the road. Half-alive, leg shattered by a car going too fast down the twisting wooded back roads of Henrietta, crying for help in a pool of blood and sinew and muscle. They called Wildlife Rescue, sat in the beamer, and waited. Ronan turned the music up louder and louder and louder. He didn’t say a word: just stared at the baby deer, tapped the wheel without rhythm, chewed on his leather wristbands.

He wore the same expression now as he had that night.

Adam paused. His chest was heaving and his throat was raw; had he been shouting? Ronan’s wide eyes made him think so. And he was squeezing the back of the chair, because at some point he guessed he had stood up. Didn’t remember it, though. His fingers were tingling, knuckles and tips turned white.  

Humiliation and shame curdled in his stomach. He swallowed down bile and tears and his ragged breath. All it took was a second. A single, distracted moment to lose his ever-tenuous grip on control, to be swept away in a violent current of rage and grief. 

_Unto dust shalt thou return._

He was suddenly very, very tired.

“I’m going to go shower,” Adam muttered as he bit his thumbnail. He left the kitchen.

Ronan didn’t follow him.

 

#######

 

Ronan, King of Insomnia and Master of Mourning, knew the symptoms of grief-induced sleep deprivation like he knew the gear shifts of his prized BMW. And while Adam handled the world’s shittiness differently--i.e. did not find someone to fistfight, did not drink himself into oblivion, did not drive his BMW at reckless and incredibly illegal speeds down I-81 well past midnight--Ronan could still tell Adam was being pulled in by something dark and dangerous.

The shouting, obviously, was the first sign. But it was also in the way he stared at things Ronan couldn’t see, brow furrowed and lips drawn into a deep frown. It was in the way his fists clenched and jaw began to quiver whenever he was sitting still for more than a few minutes. It was in the way he would suddenly get up from the couch and start cleaning/organizing/just moving things from one place to another without purpose. It was in Ronan waking up in the middle of the night to find Adam missing and the sheets gone cold. It was finding him asleep on the couch in the morning, papers scattered about in a way that would have made even Gansey at his most manic distressed. It was hearing Adam awake with a shout not long after, finding him in the living room breathing like he sprinted a marathon, sitting up with his face buried in his hands and refusing to go back to sleep. It was in how he flinched at every touch, startled with every movement, bristled every time Ronan’s tone softened at its edges.

Adam dealt with difficult things by analyzing them with such thoroughness and vigor that he drained them of all their feelings and emotions. Only then was he able to process, understand, solve, fix. The more difficult the thing, the less willing it was to yield to his annoyingly rational sensibility. If the thing was unsolvable or too enormously difficult or required emotional processing in order to control & contain--grief, for instance--Adam was fucking screwed.

Ronan knew there was no stopping Adam from imploding like a dying star. He _had_ hoped, however, that Adam would hold his shit together long enough that Ronan could stop the spiral before he hit the rupture point.

Instead, he had returned from Northern Ireland to find Adam far past the point of no return. Ronan, as far as he could tell, had two options: 1) continue on as if life was perfectly normal, and hope that Adam would start to recalibrate once he fell back into his routine. 2) push him over the edge because he was already two steps from supernova and if he got it over with maybe he’d feel better. He’d even give Adam shit to break against one of the barns; you know, for catharsis, or whatever it was Gansey called it. Smash a few plates, break a few glasses, scream a bit, and you’re good as new.

Neither option seemed like a good choice. So he called the one person who could give him option 3. Well...the two people, he supposed.

“I must admit,” Gansey said, “this is quite the surprise, Lynch.”

Ronan could _hear_ him grinning. So fucking obnoxious.

“Yeah, well, if I called too much, you might start screening your calls, Dick.”

Gansey inhaled sharply. “Is that what you do to me?”

“Wait, who’s on the phone?” a voice shouted in the background, which brought a swift end to Gansey’s pouting ( _Thank God._ )

“Ronan.”

“No fucking way. Ronan Fucking Lynch _called you?_ On the _phone?!_ ”

Ronan snarled into the reciever, “I’m about to hang the fuck up if you two keep this up.”

“Maybe if you called your friends every once in a damn while we wouldn’t need to make such a big deal about the fact that Ronan Lynch just called us,” Blue said, now in the same room and probably in control of the phone.

“Can you shut the hell up, Maggot? I called for a reason. I need some...advice.”

 

#######

 

Gansey and Blue, first and foremost, offered condolences to Adam.

“Here’s the thing though,” Blue said. “You know him way better than we do at this point. So really, who even knows if anything we would say would mean jack shit anymore. What do _you_ think he needs to do?”

“That’s the fucking problem. I have no idea. He’s never…” but he didn’t really know how to finish. He sighed, rubbing the back of his head as he paced the length of the front porch.

“What’s the one thing Adam always does?” Gansey asked, his teacher voice far less irritating when he used it for good reason.

“Bottle shit up.”

“So what usually helps him?”

“Unbottling shit. But this--”

“Is a lot bigger than his normal stress, yes,” Blue said. “Which means that bottle’s gotta be a whole lot bigger.”

“Which means he needs more space to let it out,” Ronan finished. “I know all that. But how am I supposed to get him to do that? How do I get him to smash the bottle?”

“You know he has a soft spot for you that’s the size of Jupiter, right?” Blue said after a long moment of thinking. “Maybe all you need to do is ask him.”

“I tried. He fucking deflects, or gives me an ‘oh I’m _okay enough_ ’, or whatever the fuck shit answer that doesn’t mean anything,” Ronan said.

“Maybe he wants to do this alone,” Gansey offered. “Maybe it’s best if you let him.”

“That’s maybe the shittiest idea you’ve ever had,” Blue scoffed. “And trust me, Dick, you’ve had a lot of them.”

“How bad is it, Ronan?” Gansey asked.

Ronan banged his knuckles against the porch banister. “Remember that summer? Right after the Cabeswater sacrifice?”

A long pause. “That bad?” Blue said softly.

“Worse. Way fucking worse.”

The gravity of that comparison settled into silence.  

“I think, and I could be way off,” Blue said at last, “but maybe the only thing you can do is remind him that you’re here. And that you care.”

“Shithead should already know that by now,” Ronan muttered.

“I don’t disagree with you. But you’ve been in those spirals before, too. Was it at the forefront of your mind that people gave a shit about you when you were off doing God-knows-what?”

Ronan considered this. He sat down on the front steps, running a hand through his buzzcut and down his face.

“Is this what you dealt with, Gans?” Ronan asked softly. “After Niall…”

The line was quiet for a moment. Gansey replied, “In a way.”

“Sorry,” Ronan said.

“I believe you’re the one who has trademarked the phrase ‘don’t fucking apologize for that shit,’” Gansey said. “So. Consider your own advice.”

Ronan barked out a laugh. “Fair point, Dick. Thanks.”

"On a different note: since you’ve now proven yourself capable of using a phone, does this mean you’re going to call more?” Gansey asked, the earnest hope in his tone commendable, Ronan thought, yet proved him to still be an absolute embarrassment.  

“Fat fucking chance.”

He hung up on them, just to prove his point.

 

#######

 

Ronan found Adam standing over the kitchen sink, washing was seemed like every dish in the house by hand. Nothing more than a shadow in the sunlight streaming through the kitchen window, hunched and fragile and unearthly.  

This was not a conversation Ronan wanted to have, and clearly wasn’t a conversation Adam wanted to have, either. This was, however, a conversation Adam needed.

Ronan took as deep a breath as his lung would allow.

“Parrish,” he said from the doorway.

“Lynch,” Adam replied flatly as he rinsed and scrubbed a cast iron pan

“When was the last time you slept?” Ronan asked.

Adam paused. He didn’t turn around, which meant he couldn’t get his carefully-crafted mask to stick.

“You saw me sleeping yesterday,” he said, and it was _almost_ convincingly neutral.

“I walked in on you _napping_. Doesn’t count. I’m talking 3 or more consecutive hours.”

Ronan was well-versed in instinct. From his own experiences living in this harsh, cruel, animal world, but also from watching his herds closely. From living with Opal all those months. From observing the wildlife that wandered the treelines of Singer Falls.

He sensed the shift in Adam. Watched as his defenses crept up through his spine, as his shoulders tensed and stance widened ever so slightly. Like a fox being cornered.  

Adam didn’t respond. Which was, in fact, an answer in and of itself. He began scrubbing the cast iron with renewed vigor.

Ronan stood more fully in the doorway. And he pushed a little more.

“When was the last time you ate something? Something other than toast and peanut butter?”

Adam kept scraping the cast iron.

“Look, I know this stuff fucking sucks,” Ronan said. “I know it’s hard to take care of shit when it all feels like this. But you gotta at least lay down for a little while. Give yourself a break.”

Adam stopped scrubbing. He ripped the dish towel from the oven handle and began drying the pan like it had offended him.  

“It’s going to fucking eat you up from inside out if you keep avoiding it, Parrish.”

Adam kept drying.

“I’m not saying we have to talk about it right now. We can order shitty Chinese food, and watch one of those boring-as-fuck docu-series you love. Get your mind off it or something Just. You can’t...I don’t want you...it hurts me to see you like this, okay?”

The cast iron was trembling. There was nothing left to dry.

“Adam--”

Adam dropped the pan in the sink with a startling thud. A glass shattered beneath its weight.

Adam braced his arms against the counter, as if the only thing keeping him on earth was his white-knuckled grip on the formica. His head hung between his trembling arms; his entire body shuddered as he took a deep breath.

“Please don’t say my name like that right now,” Adam whispered. His voice broke.

Ronan felt like the air had been knocked out of him. He didn’t move from the doorway, couldn’t bring himself to move at all.

Adam dug his nails into the counter, arms shaking, muscles straining, as his lungs kept tightening and his heart kept stuttering and his jaw kept quivering and these goddamn tears kept clouding his eyes, as all of these fucking feelings kept trying to heave out of his chest pour into the sink flood the counters pool into puddles on the checkered linoleum floor.

Ronan stepped forward, and a floorboard creaked.

Adam hurled the dish towel at the countertop, threw open the screen & kitchen doors, and stormed from the house.

The door creaked closed behind him.

For the first time in him life, Ronan didn’t know what to do.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To see Adam Parrish undone was a rare thing. Unless, of course, you had the privilege of being Ronan Lynch.

To see Adam Parrish undone was a rare thing. Unless, of course, you had the privilege of being Ronan Lynch.

Over the years, Ronan bore witness to Adam’s undoing time and time again. In fact, he took great pride in his unique ability to unravel the man who’s greatest fear was forfeiting control.

Most times Adam was undone by pleasure: in breathless pleas when Ronan scraped his teeth along his skin and sucked the marrow from his hip bone moments before taking Adam into his mouth; in his trembling form as Ronan guided him closer and closer to release with practiced hands and whispered commands and a rhythm that had long ago become second-nature; in the rare moments in which Adam finally sacrificed his vice on control and allowed himself to be completely and unabashedly vulnerable, to feel and to be consumed by it without regret.

Many times it was by love: when Adam caught Ronan staring at him in his reverent, worshipful way; when Ronan recited his infinite list of reasons for loving Adam Parrish while he traced the shape of his hands with his lips; when Ronan _knew_ him, could tell him and bring him exactly what he needed, understood him in a way no one else could.

Sometimes it was by joy: when they stayed up too late, giggling about nothing and then laughing about giggling about nothing, unable to stop until they were breathless, flushed, and crying; when they debated whether waffles or pancakes would make for better building materials, and cooked batches upon batches of them to prove the other wrong, and in the end agreed to disagree because there was no impartial judge and throwing their breakfast at each other like frisbees became a far better use of their time; when they were tangled together on the couch in the Barns in the evening following Thanksgiving, as Adam read Derrida and Ronan played Fortnite, and Adam was suddenly overwhelmed remembering when he’d thought he’d never be so privileged as to experience such quiet, ordinary, yet overwhelming happiness.

A few times it was by anger. Neither wanted to remember those moments, ugly, painful, and unbecoming as they were for both of them  

In all their years, however, Adam Parrish had never been fully undone by grief. He’d come close. Once, in Noah’s room, with only a duffle bag, a fruit loop box, the clothes on his back, and one functioning ear to his dust-coated name. Once, when Persephone died, as he sat on the stoop of Fox Way and held himself together with trembling hands for the sake of their mission. Once, on the anniversary of Gansey’s death/undeath, when a vicious nightmare ripped open a wound that had never really healed; the night Ronan realized that for all those times Adam had held his hand or given him space through his mourning, Adam had been neglecting his own.

Adam had survived in suboptimal conditions by compartmentalizing every aspect of his life. Boxes upon boxes of identities and memories. Work, school, magic, past: and never the four shall meet. The Adam of Aglionby and the Adam of Boyd’s and the Adam of the double-wide and the Adam who scryed into a bowl of grape juice were four people, not one. And when one of Adam’s precious identities was taken, that was when he broke.

His hearing, his pride, his mentor, his power: Each piece of him lost, mourned, and then replaced by an heir. A lineage of identities, packaged neatly into boxes and reordered as needed.

Tucked away behind all the other boxes was a box with his surname. “Parrish.” A legacy of rage, ledgers of wounds received and catalogs of wounds to be given away. Full of putrid monster blood that seeped through its container to taint everything around it. Echoes that clawed through the walls. _You will never be more than the dirt from which you came._

It was a box Adam tried his best to ignored. An unfortunate scar. Best to be left alone, to hope that one day the edges pucker less and the shine of new skin fades away.

But now, he was the patriarch. That box was his sole inheritance. And as such, had been shoved unceremoniously to the front of the line.  

_For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return._

 

#######

 

 

Ronan gave him a couple hours to be alone. In the meantime, he busied himself with farm things. Partly because the farm things needed doing, mostly because he hoped he would stumble upon Adam.

When he didn’t stumble, he went searching.

Adam wasn’t by the mud track, or near his favorite tree, or up on the barn roof, or in a back corner of the hay loft, or messing around with one of the machines, or tucked under the porch (although, Ronan supposed, it was Opal who had loved that last hiding spot, not Adam).

Ronan knew that Adam would come back. That wasn’t his worry. His worry was what Adam’s mind might do when left unsupervised. When left to its own devices. When it was drowning in grief it didn’t understand.

The golden autumn sun was beginning to stretch the shadows. There were still a few places left to check and recheck. The machine barn. The dream barn. The cow pasture. The attic.

Ronan tried the dream barn first. The locks had all been undone; a good sign that Adam had been there. He slid open the door as quietly as he could, and shut it behind him.

It had taken time and effort, but the barn was now far cleaner and more organized than it had been upon its inheritance. It was full of soft lights, the gentle whirr of gears, whispered clicking from something-or-other in the corner that Ronan could never pinpoint exactly, the sound of distant windchimes twinkling in a summer breeze. Because he spent a fair chunk of time in this barn, no matter the weather or season, Ronan had done himself the favor of dreaming up something to regulate the temperature. It was always comfortable, almost cozy.

Most of Niall’s things had been replaced with Ronan’s: test objects and knick knacks and experiments and why-the-hell-not things because when you can pull shit out of your dreams why waste it on only practical matters? It was no longer a place Ronan felt like he was intruding on, but instead a space that felt like his soul laid bare.  

But more importantly, it felt like magic. Like a place The Magician would hide.

Ronan walked slowly among the tables and shelves, past the small cot and stacks of notebooks, to the back where he kept a reserve of hay. He liked the smell, he liked to chew on pieces when he was thinking or wanted to look cool, and he liked to lay in it sometimes, to remember what it felt like to run rampant on his father’s farm with Matthew and Declan, before their family crumbled and glued themselves back together to be destroyed once again and made whole once more.

Adam must have had the same instinct, because that’s where Ronan found him. He was sitting with his back against the stack of hay along the wall, legs bent with his arms resting atop his knees. The bags beneath his eyes looked darker than Ronan thought possible.

Ronan moved closer, stepping on the creakiest floorboards and then knocking on a nearby support beam, just in case. He stood by the pole, hands in his pockets, and he waited.

Adam was holding a dream object--MAGIC 8, a glass sphere the size of a volleyball, full of swirling ink. It was a failed prototype, meant to be able to show specific memories or dreams of whoever touched it. Instead it acted like a mood ring, the ink changing colors depending how you felt while thinking of the memory. Ronan had been able to get it to form vague outlines once or twice, but that’s as close as it came to functioning.

Adam held it gently, slowly spinning it on an axis. He watched the deep blue ink curl in response, brow knit as if in deep concentration. His eyes remained painfully blank.  

Adam had spent years placing work-study-Ronan all on the same plane of importance. Which meant that Adam was frequently demanding that Lynch let him go, get his legs off of him dude I _have to study_ stop being a shithead. Ronan, never one to waste an opportunity for melodrama with the express purpose of annoying the shit out of Adam, would sigh loudly, let his limbs become dead weight for Adam to clamour out from underneath, and proceed to whine about how cold he was without his darling by his side.

They both knew he would give Adam anything he wanted, even when that thing was two hours of quiet so Adam could bang out a few paragraphs of his sociology paper or work on his problem sets for that weird Logic class he needed to take.

But not-so-secretly (because Ronan’s practiced disinterest came undone whenever Adam was around, and it didn’t take more that a .25 IQ to see how Ronan looked at Adam when he thought no one was looking...or when he forgot everyone was looking), Ronan found peace in putting on his headphones and watching Adam hyper-focus on his work. He loved how Adam’s brow knit in concentration, how he chewed on his bottom lip when he struggled to find the right word, and how his eyes shined with curiosity and determination no matter how tired or sick or frustrated he was.

But the way he stared at the sphere turning over and over in his hands...this wasn’t that.

“Did I ever tell you,” Adam started, voice soft and fragile. “About the first time we kissed?”

Ronan’s brow furrowed. “No,” he answered.

“Before you came upstairs, I had been thinking.”

“Never a good idea, huh,” Ronan replied quietly, impetuously, mired instantaneously with regret.

Adam was quiet for a moment, and the world held its breath. But then he sighed. “Yeah, probably,” he admitted, eyes still fixed on the MAGIC 8.

Ronan exhaled.

“I was thinking about this one time,” Adam continued. “When I was a kid. I got a car like the one you have. The one that plays music when you spin the wheels? Bought it with some birthday money my grandma sent, back when she still did that. Back when she cared.”

Ronan swallowed. How often he forgot how little Adam had before they met. How much he had in comparison. How he wished they had met sooner, so he could have shared that wealth with Adam. How Adam never would have accepted. Stubborn bastard.

“I was playing with it. And my parents were talking. And my dad,” Adam paused. The ink turned a moldy grey and twisted itself into a loose approximation of a car. His face tightened. “My dad said... ‘I regret the minute I squirted him into you.’”

Ronan sucked in a sharp breath. He clenched and unclenched his fist, straining for release.

Niall Lynch hadn’t been a saint. But on the continuum of questionable fathers, Niall Lynch was far from being Robert Parrish.

How often he forgot.

“What an...awful word,” Adam mused, his voice trembling. “ ‘Squirted’. I mean...graphically accurate, sure, but...not a ‘happy accident’. A mistake. A regret”

He swallowed. His jaw tensed. It didn’t stop his lip from quivering.

“How could a father ever think that?” he asked. “How could anyone think that about their own goddamn kid? What sort of fucked-up monster would hit their kid so fucking hard that he busts their ear?”

The ink changed shape. A fist. A railing. Barred teeth. Fresh blood.

 _“How anyone could hit their own child, I’ll never understand,”_ Gansey had said once, long ago, when Adam came to school with a black eye and bruises around his wrist that he couldn’t explain away. Ronan had told him to mind his own fucking business. Ronan hadn’t said he understood.

“I thought, you know, that maybe if I was good enough, smart enough, useful enough...that he’d change his mind.” Adam continued, voice growing more and more strained with every word. “That maybe he’d stop trying to kill me. That maybe one day he might even be proud of me.” He choked out a laugh. His eyes filled with tears. “Smart enough for fucking Princeton, but not smart enough to know better than that trust in shitty fucking pipe dreams.”

There, at last, was the crux. Adam’s undoing. Ripped open and laid bare for Ronan to see.

This wasn’t about Robert Parrish—a stranger, for all intents and purposes, skulking in the shadows of Adam’s life—being gone.

This was about that small scrap of hope Adam had kept tucked and hidden far from anyone’s—even Ronan’s—prying gaze, the single wish that as long as Robert Parrish was alive, maybe he could change. And if he changed, then Adam could have the family the world told him he was supposed to have. Not the Court of Richard Campbell Gansey III, who found him as he picked himself up from the Henrietta dirt and helped him scrubbed away the dust. Not his cohort of dreamers, ghosts, pages and kings. But the biological family the world, in all its cruelty and coldness, insisted was the only family worth considering.

Brotherhood of trial and tribulation meant nothing. It was blood that mattered. And the world understood what it meant to be orphaned, but only when it wasn’t a choice.  

 _Who wouldn’t want to have parents?_ people wondered. _Who would choose to walk away?_

 _Don’t you miss them?_ they asked.

 _People can change,_ they insisted.

 _You should forgive them,_ they told.

 _It’s different when you’re older,_ they promised

 _Life is short. Reconcile before they’re gone,_ they tutted.

So Adam, against all his better judgement, had coveted one last shard from his shattered life on Antietam Lane. Just in case maybe, one day, its edges would smooth like sea glass into something imperfect but beautiful and worthy of being kept. Just in case maybe, one day, he would no longer feel the sting of the jagged wounds it sliced each time he retreated far enough back into his mind to find it again.

But his father had gone to his grave the same man he had been in life. An absolutely irredeemable fucker. And as they lowered his father’s casket into the Piedmont soil, the broken piece had crumbled in Adam’s hands.

“He had always hated me, hadn’t he?” Adam whispered. “There was nothing I could have done. I could raise him from the grave, and he would still hate my guts. I was the worst thing that ever happened to him. He tried to kill me, so many times, and I still wanted him to love me.”

Adam began to cry.

“That’s what he wanted, wasn’t it? Wanted me dead? Didn’t want me to be the one to carry on his name? And he wouldn’t stop. Running away didn’t stop him. He found me. You were there, in the church, that night. You heard him come into my apartment. He would have killed me in there, I know he would have, had Cabeswater not stopped him. And he’s still trying. He’s there, every time I shut my eyes all I can see is his face and his fists and I hear his voice telling me over and over again how much he hated me. How useless I am.

“He wasn’t supposed to be able to hurt me anymore,” Adam sobbed. “He wasn’t supposed to be able to do this to me again.”

The ink grew black in the sphere, filling the space until no light could seep through. Adam’s grip tightened and tightened as he ground his teeth against tears he desperately did not want to shed for the bastard now rotting in the earth.

“I hate him,” Adam shouted. “I hate him more than anything else in this fucking world. I should be happy he’s gone, but I’m not. All I am is sad and angry and everything hurts and I don’t fucking understand why this is so goddamn painful!!”

He threw the MAGIC 8 with a cry. It smashed into a hay bale and shattered on the floor.  

Adam curled inward, pulling his knees to his chest, digging his nails into his scalp. His body shook as he wept.

Ronan knelt in front of Adam and loosened his white-knuckled grip. And then he pulled Adam into his chest, holding him steady. Ready to bear his weight, should Adam allow it.

Adam did.

He wrapped his arms around Ronan, curling into Ronan’s lap as he cried. Ronan held him tighter, just in case it helped. He kept his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm, just in case it helped. He brushed away Adam’s tears with his thumb, just in case it helped. He kissed his forehead tenderly, just in case it helped.

Just in case any of it helped.   

It took time, but eventually Adam’s shoulders sagged and his fists uncurled from their grip on Ronan’s shirt. His breathing became more even; he blinked away straggling tears.

They sat in silence among the hay bales and dream things for a long while.

Ronan ran his fingers through Adam’s hair, and traced gentle circles around the knobs of Adam’s spine.

“Why is this happening to me?” Adam whispered, so soft Ronan almost didn’t hear it.

“Because grief is a fickle bastard,” Ronan replied. “Because you gotta unearth all the shit in order to make space to bury someone. Because your parents fucked you up and that shit doesn’t just disappear because you box it up and ignore it.”

Adam was quiet for a bit. Ronan felt fresh tears dampen his chest.

“Tell me what you’re thinking?” Ronan asked, as soft as his knuckle wiping the tracks from Adam’s cheekbone.

“He made me,” Adam said, voice thick and unsteady. “He gave me this name. He gave me a reason to get out of here. I did everything I could so I could get away from him. If he hadn’t been….would I have been so eager to leave? Does that mean I owe him? What if I do the same? What if this name is--”

“Stop,” Ronan said, but it wasn’t unkind. He cupped Adam’s face reverently. “You don’t owe him shit, remember? You inherited his name, but that doesn’t mean anything. You’ve made it something different. So cut the bullshit, okay? You are not him. You will never be him. I wouldn’t let you do something that fucking dumb.”

“Promise?” Adam said with a sniffle.

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”

Adam slowly moved himself from Ronan’s chest.

“How are you feeling?” Ronan asked, tracing the lines of Adam’s palm.  

“Dry,” he answered, rubbing his face with the sleeve of his flannel. “Tired.”

“Well you did just cry out 25 years worth of bottled emotional shit. Do you want to come back to the house for some water?”

“Yeah. Okay,” Adam said.

Ronan kissed him, gentle & chaste, and then helped him up from the ground. He kicked at the broken remnants of the MAGIC 8 as they walked, and then looped his arm around Adam’s shoulders.

“Guess that flannel didn’t help much, huh,” Ronan noted as he locked up the barn. Adam held himself against the chilly wind of autumn’s night.

“I prefer the real thing when I can get it,” Adam replied, voice thick but a little stronger.

“Good,” Ronan said with a smirk. “Wouldn’t want to be replaced by a fucking shirt.”

“The shirt is a bit more manageable than you are,” Adam retorted as they walked across the dark field to the house. “So don’t think it isn’t competition.”

“I’ll be sure to be on my best behavior in front of the judges. And maybe burn that flannel when you’re sleeping.”

 

#######

 

 

They resettled in the kitchen, Ronan insisting Adam take a fucking seat and drink at least four cups of water before he even thinks about going anywhere.

Ronan slid a dimpled beer stein across the kitchen table to Adam, water sloshing over the edges

“The hell is this?” Adam asked.

“1 liter of water,” Ronan replied, smile like a knife. “Drink up, Parrish. You probably cried out at least half of your measly weight in water just now.”

Adam did as instructed. He chugged a good amount of it while Ronan brewed a cup of coffee.

“Most people drink caffeine in the mornings, you know,” Adam quipped. “Not four hours before bedtime.”

“Yeah, well, jet lag’s a bitch,” Ronan yawned.  

Adam started biting at this thumbnail. He stared at the wall, frown turning deeper and deeper.  

He jumped when Ronan grabbed the hand he was gnawing on. Blinked a few times. Refocused on the kitchen, on the creaking wood of the chair, on the crickets chirping outside the open window, on the cold sweat of the water stein. Noticed the pint of chocolate fudge ice cream with two spoons stuck in its fresh, smooth surface. Noticed the band-aid waiting in front of him.

His hand was bleeding.

“Oh,” Adam said, brow knit.

Ronan put his other arm on the back of Adam’s chair. He looked at him--saw into him, as he so often did--with a sharp eyebrow raised, and he waited.

Adam sighed. “I shouldn’t have come here, should I?” he muttered, voice raw and cracked. He rubbed his face with his hand. “I-I thought I could handle it. Thought I’d get closure. Thought this would be the end, and I’d be able to move on. I felt like...I felt like I needed to be here for this. But…”

Adam inhaled deep, unsteady breaths, sniffling and scrubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his flannel. “God, this is pathetic,” he said, fighting through the thick lump in his throat.

“It’s not,” Ronan replied, gentle but firm. With a careful hand on the back of his neck, he pulled Adam closer and pressed a long, tender kiss to his temple. “You’ve been through hell. You suck at coping. This is what happens.”

“I should’ve gotten over this all by now. But it keeps coming back. It’s like he’s haunting me. I know he’s not actually. But it feels that way. I can do it,” he said suddenly, taking the band-aid from Ronan’s hand and finishing the job himself.

They sat in silence for a moment, not the suffocating and cold kind, or the thick white noise of gathering storm clouds. It was Adam bandaging his thumb while Ronan traced the nape of his neck with each of his fingers, huddle together at the kitchen table in the soft yellow light of their home. It was the peaceful kind, the comfortable, easy kind. The kind that felt like home. The first of the sort Adam had since arriving in Henrietta.

Ronan slid the pint of ice cream closer to Adam. Adam grabbed a spoonful and savored it quietly.  Ronan grabbed his spoon, dug out a brownie piece, rolled it over to Adam’s side, and then ate the rest of the spoonful.

“I’m sorry I yelled yesterday,” Adam said softly.

Ronan snorted half of a laugh. “If yelling is the worst thing you do during this, Parrish, I’ll count myself lucky.”

“Does it get any better?”

“No,” Ronan said. Simple. Honest. “But you learn to live with it anyways.”

Adam’s brow knit in thought. He carved another spoonful.

“I think it’ll be different for you, though,” Ronan said, tapping the end of his spoon on the table. “I don’t think healing looks the same for everyone. If it did, this shit would be a lot easier to manage.”

Adam hummed as he considered that.

“Ice cream seems like a universal cure, though,” he noted after a moment.

Ronan chuckled, digging out another brownie piece and handing his spoon to Adam. “Sure does seem that way.”

Adam smiled. A small and fragile thing, but it was a start.

“Hey, can we go to Cabeswater II before I leave?” he asked.

“You don’t need my permission, Parrish. You have the keys,” Ronan said.

“I want you to come with me,” Adam clarified, the smile fading and his gaze drawn to something far away. “I haven’t seen Opal yet, and…”

Ronan guided Adam’s gaze with a gentle hand along his jawline. Their blue eyes met.

“Of course I’ll come,” Ronan answered. He kissed him, full of warmth and care and tenderness and chocolate. He felt Adam smile again against his lips.

“I love you, Ronan,” Adam said, suddenly struck by a need to tell him, every day, just how much. That it should be the first thing he said every morning and the last thing he said every night and should be shouted from the rooftops every second in between. That it should be said in everything he did, and then spoken aloud just be sure he understood. That after every fight, every date, every time they fucked, every time they made love, every meal, every disagreement, every lazy day, every adventure, every day together and every day apart he should say it. Because Ronan filled him so completely, had found his way into every crack and crevice of Adam’s heart and soul and life, made him feel like anything was possible and that everything may not be okay right now but it could be and it would be. He made him feel worthy. He made him feel at home. And Ronan deserved to know.

“I love you, too, Adam,” Ronan whispered in reply. And he was thinking the same.

 

 

#######

 

 

Depending on where you began the story, it was a story about families.  

A story of bonds thicker than blood, of families found and not inherited. Of crests forged through challenge and celebration, not through surnames and heritage. Of homes defined by heartlines and safe harbors and knowing true peace & comfort in the arms of a partner.

It was a story of neither Parrishes nor Lynches.

It was a story of who they might become together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is. 
> 
> In case anyone is wondering, when Adam was yelling I could not for the life of me stop thinking about [this scene.](https://youtu.be/pfevBIsVG1o) YOU'RE WELCOME. 
> 
> Always hoping to improve, so comments & constructive criticisms are encouraged. Thanks for stopping by, friends!!


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